Questions on the Poisonwood Bible
Extension 1 English Assessment Task 2
Part 1: Written Report
The Poisonwood Bible
1) Write a brief synopsis of the text. Identify the textual form, genre and provide the details of publication for your text.
Barbara Kingsolver’s, The Poisonwood Bible, follows the lives of the Prices, a missionary family, who in 1959 leave their American lives for a small village in the Belgian Congo. Published in 1998, America, The Poisonwood Bible takes form as a fictitious historical, post-colonial text, denouncing the Western colonisation of the past.
2) Identify and briefly describe the context of the text – literary, social, historical, cultural and political.
Kingsolver, born 1955 Maryland US, after attending university studying biology she developed a passion for social activism, studying the works of Karl Marx and Simone de Beauvoir and partaking in protests against the Vietnam War. Through the novels of Doris Lessing, Kingsolver discovered the potential for fiction to carry messages of social and political advocacy. Upon discovering the United States involvement in the Congo’s failure at independence, Kingsolver was driven to make known the deprivation of Western greed, hubris and failings of global justice.
3) Identify the dominant ways of thinking and dominant values of the context of the text and show how the text challenges, reflects and comments on these.
Throughout The Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver highlights the plight of local culture under the influence of the Price’s global beliefs through the use of light and dark imagery. The common global belief that the West is in fact enlightened and Africa somewhat depraved is depicted through Nathan’s first sermon where he refers to the current state of the natives to be complete “nakedness and darkness of the soul”. This phrase is liturgical language but ironically is by no means biblical and is in fact a mixture of verses found in the Old and New Testament. To add insult to injury, Kingsolver further rejects the
Part 1: Written Report
The Poisonwood Bible
1) Write a brief synopsis of the text. Identify the textual form, genre and provide the details of publication for your text.
Barbara Kingsolver’s, The Poisonwood Bible, follows the lives of the Prices, a missionary family, who in 1959 leave their American lives for a small village in the Belgian Congo. Published in 1998, America, The Poisonwood Bible takes form as a fictitious historical, post-colonial text, denouncing the Western colonisation of the past.
2) Identify and briefly describe the context of the text – literary, social, historical, cultural and political.
Kingsolver, born 1955 Maryland US, after attending university studying biology she developed a passion for social activism, studying the works of Karl Marx and Simone de Beauvoir and partaking in protests against the Vietnam War. Through the novels of Doris Lessing, Kingsolver discovered the potential for fiction to carry messages of social and political advocacy. Upon discovering the United States involvement in the Congo’s failure at independence, Kingsolver was driven to make known the deprivation of Western greed, hubris and failings of global justice.
3) Identify the dominant ways of thinking and dominant values of the context of the text and show how the text challenges, reflects and comments on these.
Throughout The Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver highlights the plight of local culture under the influence of the Price’s global beliefs through the use of light and dark imagery. The common global belief that the West is in fact enlightened and Africa somewhat depraved is depicted through Nathan’s first sermon where he refers to the current state of the natives to be complete “nakedness and darkness of the soul”. This phrase is liturgical language but ironically is by no means biblical and is in fact a mixture of verses found in the Old and New Testament. To add insult to injury, Kingsolver further rejects the